The Library of Greek Mythology (Oxford World's Classics) (8 page)

1. Theogony

¹
OURANOS
was the first ruler of the universe. He married

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Ge,
*
and fathered as his first children the beings known as the Hundred-Handers, Briareus, Cottos, and Gyes, who were unsurpassable in size and strength, for each had a hundred hands and fifty heads. After these, Ge bore him the Cyclopes,
*
namely, Arges, Steropes, and Brontes, each of whom had a single eye on his forehead. But Ouranos tied these children up and hurled them into Tartaros (a place of infernal darkness in Hades,
*
as distant from the earth as the earth from the sky);
³
and he then fathered by Ge some sons called the Titans, namely, Oceanos, Coios, Hyperion, Creios, Iapetos, and the youngest of all, Cronos, and some daughters called the Titanides, namely, Tethys, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, Dione, and Theia.

⁴
. But Ge, angered by the loss of her children who had been thrown into Tartaros,
*
persuaded the Titans to attack their father, and gave an adamantine
*
sickle to Cronos; and they all attacked him, apart from Oceanos, and Cronos severed his father’s genitals and threw them into the sea. (From the drops of blood that flowed out
*
the Furies were born: Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megaira.) When they had driven their father from power, they brought back their brothers who had been thrown down to Tartaros, and entrusted the sovereignty to Cronos.

⁵
But he bound them once again and imprisoned them in Tartaros, and married his sister Rhea; and since both Ge and Ouranos had prophesied to him that he would be stripped of
his power by his own son, he swallowed his children as they were born. He swallowed his first-born, Hestia, and then Demeter and Hera, and after them, Pluto and Poseidon.

⁶
Angered by this, Rhea went to Crete while she was pregnant with Zeus, and brought him to birth in a cave on Mount Dicte.
*
She gave him to the Curetes
*
and to the nymphs Adrasteia and Ida, daughters of Melisseus, to rear.
⁷
So the nymphs fed the child on the milk of Amaltheia
*
while the Curetes, fully armed, guarded the baby in the cave, beating their spears against their shields to prevent Cronos from hearing the child’s voice. And Rhea wrapped a stone in swaddling clothes and passed it to Cronos to swallow as if it were the newborn child.

¹
When Zeus was fully grown, he enlisted the help of

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Metis,
*
the daughter of Oceanos, and she gave Cronos a drug to swallow, which forced him to disgorge first the stone and then the children whom he had swallowed; and with their aid, Zeus went to war against Cronos and the Titans. When they had been fighting for ten years, Ge prophesied that the victory would go to Zeus if he took as his allies those who had been hurled down to Tartaros. So he killed Campe, who was guarding them, and set them free. And the Cyclopes then gave Zeus thunder, lightning, and a thunderbolt, and they gave a helmet
*
to Pluto, and a trident to Poseidon. Armed with these weapons, they overpowered the Titans, and imprisoned them in Tartaros, appointing the Hundred-Handers as their guards; and they shared power
*
between themselves by casting lots. Zeus was allotted sovereignty over the heavens, Poseidon over the sea, and Pluto over the halls of Hades.
*

²
The Titans had the following offspring: to Oceanos and Tethys were born the Oceanids,
*
Asia, Styx, Electra, Doris, Eurynome, [Amphitrite,] and Metis; to Coios and Phoebe were born Asteria and Leto; to Hyperion and Theia were born Dawn
and the Sun and Moon; to Creios and Eurybia, daughter of Pontos, were born Astraios, Pallas, and Perses;
³
and to Iapetos and Asia were born Atlas who bears the sky on his shoulders, and Prometheus, and Epimetheus, and Menoitios, whom Zeus struck with a thunderbolt during the battle with the Titans and hurled down to Tartaros.
⁴
To Cronos and Philyra, Cheiron was born, a Centaur of twofold form. To Dawn and Astraios were born the winds and stars, and to Perses and Asteria, Hecate; and to Pallas and Styx were born Nice, Cratos, Zelos, and Bia.
*

⁵
Zeus caused oaths
*
to be sworn by the waters of Styx, which flow from a rock in Hades. He bestowed this honour on Styx in return for the help that she and her children had brought to him in his war against the Titans.

⁶
To Pontos
*
and Ge were born Phorcos, Thaumas, Nereus, Eurybia, and Ceto. To Thaumas and Electra were born Iris and the Harpies, Aello and Ocypete; and to Phorcos and Ceto, the Phorcides and the Gorgons, who will be considered below when we tell the story of Perseus.
⁷
To Nereus and Doris were born the Nereids,
*
whose names are Cymothoe, Speio, Glauconome, Nausithoe, Halie, Erato, Sao, Amphitrite, Eunice, Thetis, Eulimene, Agave, Eudore, Doto, Pherousa, Galatea, Actaie, Pontomedousa, Hippothoe, Lysianassa, Cymo, Eione, Halimede, Plexaure, Eucrante, Proto, Calypso, Panope, Cranto, Neomeris, Hipponoe, Ianeira, Polynome, Autonoe, Melite, Dione, Nesaie, Dero, Evagore, Psamathe, Eumolpe, lone, Dynamene, Ceto, and Limnoreia.

¹
Zeus married Hera and fathered Hebe, Eileithuia, and Ares;
*

3

but he had intercourse with many other women, both mortal and immortal. By Themis, daughter of Ouranos he had some daughters, the Seasons, namely, Eirene, Eunomia, and Dice,
*
and the Fates, namely, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos; by Dione he had Aphrodite;
*
by Eurynome, daughter of Oceanos, the Graces, namely, Aglaie, Euphrosyne, and Thaleia; by Styx,
Persephone;
*
and by Mnemosyne the Muses, firstly Calliope, and then Cleio, Melpomene, Euterpe, Erato, Terpsichore, Ourania, Thaleia, and Polymnia.

²
Calliope bore to Oiagros—or really, it is said, to Apollo— a son, Linos,
*
who was killed by Heracles, and Orpheus, who practised the art of singing to the lyre, and set rocks and trees in motion by his singing. When his wife, Eurydice, died from a snake-bite, he went down to Hades in the hope of bringing her up, and persuaded Pluto
*
to send her back to earth. Pluto promised to do so, provided that on the way up Orpheus never looked round until he had arrived back at his house. But Orpheus failed to obey him, and turning round, he caught sight of his wife, and she had to return below. Orpheus also in vented the mysteries of Dionysos. He was torn apart by the Maenads,
*
and is buried in Pieria.

³
Cleio fell in love with Pieros, son of Magnes, through the anger of Aphrodite (for Cleio had reproached her for her love of Adonis
*
); and she had intercourse with him and bore him a son, Hyacinthos, who aroused the passion of Thamyris, son of Philammon and a nymph Argiope, the first man to love other males.
*
But Hyacinthos later died at the hand of Apollo, who became his lover and killed him accidentally when throwing a discus.
*
And Thamyris, who was exceptional for his beauty and his skill in singing to the lyre, challenged the Muses
*
to a contest in music, on the agreement that if he proved to be the better, he could have intercourse with them all, but if he were defeated, they could deprive him of anything they wished. The Muses proved to be superior, and deprived him both of his eyes and his skill in singing to the lyre.

⁴
Euterpe bore to the River Strymon a son Rhesos, who was killed by Diomedes at Troy;
*
but according to some accounts, his mother was Calliope. To Thaleia and Apollo were born the Corybantes;
*
and to Melpomene and Acheloos, the Sirens, who will be considered below in our account of Odysseus.

⁵
Hera gave birth to Hephaistos without prior intercourse (though Homer describes him as another of her children by
Zeus).
*
Zeus threw him down from heaven for coming to the aid of his mother when she was put in chains; for Zeus had suspended Hera from Olympos for sending a storm against Heracles when he was sailing home after capturing Troy. Hephaistos fell to earth on Lemnos and was lamed in both his legs, but Thetis came to his rescue.
*

⁶
Zeus had intercourse with Metis, although she changed into many different forms in the hope of escaping it. While she was pregnant, Zeus forestalled future developments by swallowing her; for [Ge]
*
declared that after having the girl who was due to be born to her, Metis would give birth to a son who would become the ruler of heaven. It was for fear of this that he swallowed her down. When the time arrived for the child to be born, Prometheus, or according to others, Hephaistos, struck the head of Zeus with an axe and from the top of his head, near the River Triton,
*
leapt Athene, fully armed.

¹
One of Coios’ daughters, Asteria, took the form of a quail

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and threw herself into the sea to escape the embraces of Zeus; and a city was named Asteria after her, for this was the former name of what was later called Delos.
*
His other daughter, Leto, had intercourse with Zeus, and was chased all over the earth by Hera until she arrived at Delos, where she gave birth first to Artemis, and then, with the aid of Artemis as a midwife, to Apollo.

Artemis devoted herself to hunting and remained a virgin, while Apollo learned the art of divination from Pan, son of Zeus and Hybris, and went to Delphi where, at that time, the oracles were delivered by Themis;
*
and when the guardian of the oracle, the serpent Python, tried to prevent him from approaching the chasm,
*
he killed it and took possession of the oracle.